Does she resent the tag “anti-vaccine”; whilst only providing information which is against vaccination, a lot? Tick.

Perfect! Wilyman is perfect. And the added bonus with Wilyman is that she appears to have the ongoing imprimatur of the University of Wollongong; who in turn would appear to have had the word “disrepute” erased from all of its libraries’ dictionaries. I’m wondering if they have a sort of Safe Eyes software installed on the main servers – Safe Disrepute – which seeks out and destroys all versions of the word, lest anyone get any uppity ideas about what integrity means to past, present, and future alumni and academics, and other staff. They all carry Wilyman’s stink, now. And they’re not happy.

Today, on her Facebook page, Wilyman posted this…thing…featuring the disgraced Sherri Tenpenny. Tenpenny complained – with a not unexpected misrepresentation of the circumstances surrounding her cancelled 2015 Caravan of Hurt Down Under – about threats which were made against prospective venues for her Australian tour. Tenpenny forgot to mention that it was an anti-vaccine activist who was doing the threatening. But, anyway. Tenpenny gave an interview to Irish conspiracy theorist, Richie Allen. And Wilyman linked to it on her official Facebook page which is the official Facebook page for her official website; the official website which provides you with “the truth behind vaccinations”, this truth being that which is also what “the government won’t tell you”:

Friends. Dear friends. I listened to that 30 minute thing. I transcribed some of it (the rest wasn’t worth writing down). Here are the main points from the interview which was promoted by Judy Wilyman, University of Wollongong PhD student:

7:40

Richie Allen: David Icke is a friend of the show…says vaccines are about depopulation…pumping chemicals into children…to change DNA…

Tenpenny: “I would have to agree with David on that…I do believe that there is a very large depopulation agenda going on…Gardasil…testicular atrophy…uterine atrophy in rats…Polysorbate 80 which is in the Gardasil vaccine…DPT vaccine”

13:20

Tenpenny: We are “allowing foreign matter that has animal DNA, chemicals that are known to be carcinogens, heavy metals, stray viruses that some of them are oncoviruses into their children and if people do not understand that that is a consciously sinister act being done by people much higher up than your doctor’s office, then, they really need to rethink that…It is corrupting and changing the DNA of the human race”

14:20

Richie Allen: is sterilization a big thing for the “lunatics”?

Tenpenny: “If you can’t kill people off with pestilence and war then how you lower the population is you don’t allow them to reproduce”

20:20

Richie Allen/Q: what about “lunatic Nazi scientists” being brought in covertly after World War 2?

Tenpenny: “Nazi scientists took off their business suits and put on a white coat and what has been infiltrated into the medical education system the research for new medications and drugs…GMOs…vaccines…there is a global conspiracy…implement their agenda…working together to make everybody on the planet sicker”

22:50

Richie Allen/Q: are all vaccines bad?

Tenpenny: [fundamental idea of protecting from disease is good one] “injecting vaccines as they currently exist and as they are created and what is in theory and there is no such thing as a safe vaccine, there is no such thing as a green vaccine…using vaccines in this way in which they are administered has no value in that. None”

31:10

Tenpenny: “why is it that parents still trust their doctor and will sacrifice their child to the pharmaceutical god by putting foreign matter in them and potentially either killing them or making them a customer for life and I know that sounds really, really strong but what are we actually trying to avoid? Childhood illnesses consist of a fever, a cough, a rash and some diarrhea and we’re willing to take that exchange of lifetime of illness to make sure your kid doesn’t have a fever, a cough for a couple of weeks? That’s not a fair exchange in any sense of the word”

I don’t need to add anything to the preceding. But, I want to contrast it directly with Wilyman’s own website.

Wilyman’s about page refers to the University of Wollongong many times:

In 2004 I began researching this public health issue at the University of Wollongong (UOW). I completed a Master of Science degree (Population Health) in the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences in 2007.This included a research project analysing the Australian Government’s Policy on Whooping Cough. In 2007 I continued my research with a PhD.

I transferred back to Wollongong University in 2011 to complete my PhD investigating the Australian government’s reasons for its current National Immunisation Program (NIP). My PhD includes an examination of the science in the government’s vaccination policy…

Even more striking – in the current context; oh, let’s face it: in almost all contexts pertaining to Wilyman’s claims – is the section directly underneath the above, titled, “Motivation for this Research”. Wilyman argues that she is being treated unfairly by “lobby groups” who “present disinformation about my research”. She continues:

The information I am providing on this website is academic research for public debate to ensure that decisions made on health are supported in the medical literature.

And:

Many lobby groups are disparaging researchers reputations and not debating the scientific issues.

Referring again to “academic debate” and “vaccination…information” which goes toward her PhD:

This website is set up to present an academic debate of vaccination (free of emotional arguments) and it contains information that will be presented for the completion of a PhD.

Why would Wilyman deny that her event was an anti-vaccine event? Why would this concern her? In only her previous newsletter she sent out, Wilyman linked to a delusional YouTube video made by the US anti-vaccine organisation, The Weston A Price Foundation…

Here is a 6 minute video illustrating the dangers of this bill because governments have not studied the long-term health effects of the combined schedule of vaccines in animals or humans.

This is critical information for the health of global populations. Many of the ingredients of vaccines are listed below.

Judy Wilyman
PhD Candidate
www. vaccinationdecisions. net

This is the newsletter with three stills from that YouTube video, which Wilyman linked from her official newsletter. Does she think no one else will watch it? Does Wilyman think no one will check her claims, ever? Something is not right, and it never has been:

And these issues aren’t new for the University of Wollongong. In 2013 it was forced to issue a statement about her, on Twitter:

Questions have rightly been raised in public about the level of appropriate supervision given to Wilyman by Professor Brian Martin – himself a friend of the anti-vaccination movement, guiding the execrable Australian Vaccination skeptics Network and its cruel ideologue, and long-term Wilyman friend, Meryl Dorey, away from appropriate regulatory scrutiny – and the University of Wollongong believes that Martin is performing his supervisory role of Ms Wilyman in a satisfactory manner and that he is an appropriate supervisor for her study. Indeed the follow-up question is, then, why is someone who is being supervised appropriately, on vaccination policies, on “the science”, routinely citing conspiracy cranks? Is the department infected? I’m Just Asking Questions.

Getting back to Wilyman’s recent Facebook shenanigans, it is not difficult to watch the real Wilyman in the natural pastures of anti-vaccinationism. For yet another example, Wilyman is a member of this closed group, Anti-Vaccination Australia:

And Wilyman even liked this attempt at fat-shaming myself, posted by the group’s adolescent creator, Belgin Sila Colak:

Judy Wilyman and her colleagues not being derogatory

Here’s another version, in case the University of Wollongong can’t see the previous one:

I mean, does Wilyman ever stop to consider anything she does or says – anywhere, anytime – preferring only to vilify critics who rightfully and appropriately point out her demonstrable and exasperatingly ubiquitous failings of logic and comprehension; Wilyman citing only her tired drone of “you are derogatory…this is derogatory…they are being derogatory about the science presented to the community from the university which is the science the gubment doesn’t want you to see…the science…derogatory…”?

Has the University of Wollongong even re-read her masters thesis? I know people who have. Does it still stand up to academic rigour, University of Wollongong? I’m Just Asking Questions.

When is enough going to be enough for the University of Wollongong and it long-suffering fans?

When is academic freedom just plain old disrepute?

___________________________________

Update October 3 2015

Sydney anti-vaccine protest organiser Renata Bialkowska is organising a panel discussion featuring Judy Wilyman and a “representative from the government or medical profession”. As far as I know no representatives from the government or medical profession will give Wilyman the undue recognition she craves, by appearing on stage with her. This is as it should be. As the old saying goes, “it would look great on Wilyman’s CV; not so great on mine.” The panel is being filmed by filmmaker Bialkowska who also filmed and photographed the protest marches for her upcoming documentary:

We will be filming a Q&A style discussion to give you an opportunity to express your views and questions about the issue.

A professional panel representing both sides…

Ah, yes: “both sides”. That old, slippery three-card trick.

The organisers state that the University of Technology Sydney’s facilities will be used for the purposes of this anti-vaccine sham, on October 15:

Having just gone back through all of Bialkowka’s involvement with the anti-vaccine protests, I noted a discrepancy in her ability to be an impartial observer/filmmaker, who is up-front in declaring the depth of her affiliations with anti-vaccinationism, and as an organiser of the protests, since their inception.

Indeed, on June 8 2015, we see the official anti-vaccine protest page post their press release which was shared from the barking mad Conspiracy Oz website. Notice the text from the website [my bold]:

Hi Ppl received this very important email from Renata Bialkowska, support this Protest for Free Choice! – …

At that time the above Facebook post led to this page, which I fortunately screenshot, back in June. Again, note the text [my bold]:

Hi Ppl received this very important email from Renata Bialkowska, support this Protest for Free Choice! – Mick Raven

Today I thought I’d better ensure I wasn’t making things up, or confusing myself and others; so I took to the Wayback Machine to check that the linked post really did say what I thought it said. This is what the Wayback Machine tells us [my bold]:

Hi Ppl received this very important email from Renata Bialkowska, support this Protest for Free Choice! – Mick Raven

Okay. We weren’t seeing things. The Conspiracy Oz website stated unequivocally that they received the official anti-vaccine protest press release from Renata Bialkowska. The reason I felt the need to go back and triple-check everything is that Bialkowska’s name has been erased from that very post, in the interim. This is how the Conspiracy Oz post looks, now [my bold]:

Hi Ppl received this very important email from “No jab No pay No way!” Protest organisers , support this Protest for Free Choice! – Mick Raven

One thing which really rustles my jimmies is when anyone attempts to pull a fast one, or fails to disclose conflicts of interest, or affiliations. I can’t think of any appropriate reason why the owner of the Conspiracy Oz website would need to go back and erase Bialkowska’s name from that June 8 post. The whole thing makes me think there’s a conspiracy to cover up the TRUTH™.

Luckily, Bialkowska is very well educated on these things; she knows to whom she should turn to uncover the TRUTH™ for us, especially when there is suspected conspiratorial chicanery afoot: Alex Jones, Conspiracy Oz, and Vinny Eastwood*. From her Facebook profile:

In a post updated since the publication of this blog post, Wilyman repeats her callous claims about both the McCaffery and Hughes families. There are no words to describe the lack of empathy displayed by Wilyman by repeating her cruel remarks; remarks which she knows are cruel, having been requested to stop making them by the families.

Wilyman – again – repeats the slur that the documented deaths of two infants, from whooping cough, among others, are anecdotes which are the equivalent of unsubstantiated anecdotes of vaccine side effects:

All vaccines come with a risk and anecdotal evidence of a death or serious reaction to a vaccine is not used to prevent the use of vaccines and similarly this type of evidence should not be used to promote vaccines to the community.

Wilyman also repeats her slur that the McCaffery family received a monetary reward in exchange for their vaccine advocacy, thus impugning the character of the McCaffery family. The McCafferys donated the total of their prize-money, awarded to them by Australian Skeptics – for The Thornett Award for the Promotion of Reason – toward pertussis immunisation research:

The Australian Skeptics lobby group also present awards of $1,000 to parents who tell their stories to promote vaccines to the public.

That Wilyman attempts to recoil from her hideous imputations with the following sentence does not negate her cruelty:

This does not suggest that parents are promoting vaccines for the financial awards.

The student charter states, under Responsibilities, the following (and others not listed here):
The University of Wollongong expects that students will meet the following responsibilities:
* Develop and uphold the values of academic integrity.
* Respect the diversity of the University and broader communities.
* Behave responsibly and honestly in ways that are considerate of the rights and needs of others and refrain from behaviour that may adversely affect the experiences of others.
* Develop and practise the skills associated with collaboration and collegiality.

It is time for the University of Wollongong to act against this disgraceful individual, and those who have failed in their supervision of her.

The University of Wollongong is more than aware of how hurtful Wilyman’s behaviour has been for parents who have lost their babies to vaccine preventable disease. In 2012, David McCaffery was forced to issue this statement to Meryl Dorey and Judy Wilyman:

Meryl Dorey, you have been asked time after time not to mention our daughter Dana on your website. The recent article by Judy Wilyman is false, dangerous, misleading and disrespectful. She has no expertise in the area of vaccines and has not asked, nor does she have, our permission to discuss our daughter’s death.

Let’s be clear, Dana’s death to whooping cough and the issues related to it, are not anecdotal. How can you and Ms Wilyman be so callous?

Dana died from whooping cough, a vaccine preventable disease. And we mourn her death every day. You and your friends add torture to our pain.

Ms Dorey, you and your group simply do not know us and we ask you to stop discussing Dana’s death. Her tragic death is not something that you can toy with to promote your misleading ideology.

Once again, you and Ms Wilyman are not friends of ours, or medical doctors and know nothing about Dana’s life or death.

BTW< Both of you, do not take this post as an invite to respond in any way. Leave us and our little girl alone!

David McCaffery

Again, that was in 2012.

Three years have passed and Wilyman is still doing it.

Today the Hughes family have also made their feelings known to the University of Wollongong in twotweets:

@UOW @uowresearch a financial reward is the last thing on our mind when our child has just died. Much rather have our baby!

@UOW @uowresearch the abuse we receive from mmbrs of groups she runs is awful. All because our child died & we spoke abt it.

How does this sit with your student’s responsibilities, University of Wollongong? How does Judy Wilyman fulfill this?

Behave responsibly and honestly in ways that are considerate of the rights and needs of others and refrain from behaviour that may adversely affect the experiences of others.

Maybe the University of Wollongong will ignore all of the above; remain true to previous form; and provide Wilyman with another plug in the UoW Faculty of Arts newsletter; just like it did in 2012, after Wilyman had made those despicable comments about the McCaffery family:

The government has been invited to present the arguments for this policy and Phd candidate Judy Wilyman & Naturopath Brett Smith will be speaking against this policy

It should be noted that as an unregistered NSW-based health care practitioner, anti-vaccine thug Brett Smith is answerable to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, thanks to the awesome work of Meryl Dorey. Any attendees should take care at this event as anti-vaccine thug Brett Smith has form for intimidation and violent threats.

24 Responses to Judy Wilyman has no clothes

All that I can say is that the university not properly supervising candidates and their supervisors causes me to question the quality of education of that university.
Enough that HR has a standing notice to reject all applicants who show that specific university in their CV.
All that it took was a warning to senior management, who then observed the lack of quality in that student, the lack of supervision by the supervisor or faculty management and now they question the quality of anyone affiliated with that university.

By failing to guide Wilyman on a path of evidence based research, UOW has set a striking precedent of faux academia. No amount of rhetoric proposing defence of Wilyman’s academic freedom can possibly erase the reality that a student has been permitted by her supervisor and the university to self-sabotage her career.
This utterly taints the reputation of UOW and leaves Wilyman to face a future in which her claims are time and again shown as patently false and ludicrous.
Rather than lend legitimacy to vaccine conspiracy, Wilman’s conduct will continue to
erode the larger academic integrity of her university and what remains of the professional standing of her supervisor.
Fortunately, the demise of these three reputations is as just as it is predictable.

Crimes, wzrd1, you win today’s prize for the most outrageously unthinking knee-jerk response.

Wilyman has been studying much longer than is normal and produced almost nothing of merit (I count one peer-reviewed publication on Google Scholar). The chances of her producing a worthwhile thesis are approaching nil and she has to convincer her examiners, not her supervisor, of the merit of her argument. To impugn all of the candidates of this institution because of a single maverick professor and his deluded student is spectacularly bigoted.

Not all mavericks are quacks and academic freedom is important. The arbiter of the worth of research is not the university hierarchy but the wider academic community. Even this case will prove a salutary lesson to other PhD candidates; if they fail to meet the requirements for systemic investigation then they won’t complete.

I’m pretty sure that under the social sciences, where she is studying, Wilyman and her supervisor have some input into her preferred examiners. I’d need to find this info, but, it has been confirmed for me on a couple of occasions by academics.

There are certain requirements that they be ‘experts in the field’ but that judgement is fairly subjective and is ultimately about the standards of the awarding institution. I’ve seen people with ‘PhDs’ publish some incredibly rank, pseudoscience bullshit, only to track them down and find that they do have a legitimate (legally) PhD from a legitimate (legally) institution – but that institution is the University of Shitass Nowhere that was pretty much just happy to have a graduate. Unfortunately, not all PhDs are worth something anymore, and their worth is tied to their institution and how rigorous their standards are. I’m not saying she will, but Wilyman -can- get a PhD from Wollongong, and if she does then their PhDs will be devalued.

Not publishing along the way, even if it is in local conferences, is extremely unusual. The usual case for not publishing is if patent protection is being sought, but when that’s achieved this is usually a flood.

My supervisors made the call on who the examiners were. I suggested some that I thought were knowledgeable in the area, but I had no say in the actual selection. At QUT both examiners have to be from overseas, and remain anonymous to me unless they consent to be named. One did (the nice one), the other didn’t (the nasty one).

Getting to the point of even submitting the thesis required my draft to get past independent faculty review and the public defence. Hopefully UoW have some QC processes in place so a thesis sent out for examination is worthy of the examiners’ time.

Have to wonder how Ms Wilyman has remained a student at UoW for so long. The Graduate School Regs (http://www.uow.edu.au/research/rsc/student/thesis/UOW009043.html#3.1) states that the maximum time for a part time PhD is 8 years. 2007 to 2015 — tick tock, tick tock. The wording for extensions is “Domestic candidature may be extended beyond the maximum time period following a satisfactory review of progress.”

The student charter (http://www.uow.edu.au/student/haveyoursay/studentcharter/index.html) states, under Responsibilities, the following (and others not listed here):
The University of Wollongong expects that students will meet the following responsibilities:
* Develop and uphold the values of academic integrity.
* Respect the diversity of the University and broader communities.
* Behave responsibly and honestly in ways that are considerate of the rights and needs of others and refrain from behaviour that may adversely affect the experiences of others.
* Develop and practise the skills associated with collaboration and collegiality.

The fact that UOW fails to act on the disgraceful behaviour and lack of academic credibility of their pet anti-vaxxer reflects poorly on them.

Her use of her ill gained qualification awarded by UOW and her position as student there also reflects poorly on them. When will UOW stand up for common human decency, and academic standards and take some action? Is it that UOW lacks those qualities? Does UOW really support her making offensive public insinuations about bereaved parents?

What kind of rank amateur organises a Public Forum, and states that they have invited “the government” to send speakers? Which government – State? Federal? the Bogan Shire Council?. What department, what official did they approach? If they genuinely want to hear the other side of the argument they are not going about it in a professional manner.